Of course people have preferences in that area. Some more than
others.

More interesting question to me is how people come to those
preferences - oftentimes it comes from cultural stereotypes,
inherited bias and simplistic thinking, rather than carefully
thought-out personal experiences.

(I changed the "ethnicity" field on my profile here last year to
"undeclared", because while I don't have any personal racial
preferences, I don't want to be sought-out by people who do.)

I definitely have my preference. I don't find anything wrong
with preferring a race over another, but likely that's just because
it applies to myself. Being asexual, if I'm not planning on having
sex with someone, I'd damned well better find them aesthetically
pleasing, and I just so happen to prefer certain people. :P

I'll add, while I do prefer a certain race for my own partner,
that does not include all of that member, nor does it mean I
believe that race is superior over another. I think it is when the
superiority issues comes into play is when the racism issue comes
together. Again, I still could be wrong.

Well, many of the responses I've read here seem to be based on
two assumptions that I can't even agree represent, let alone
approximate, lived reality - that human beings aren't influenced by
context and just randomly generate individual preferences and that
there is zero subtlety or grey area in how to judge any given
individual's response to lived experience.

I mean I've been participating in sexuality related discussions
sites online for almost 20 years now and I can summarize all the
responses that the OP is likely to get to this question based on
the many iterations of it that I've seen in that time. I think we
already have examples of all them here. After this it will just be
a flame war between defensive people and self-righteous people with
a few people arguing a more subtle approach to understanding the
situation while the other two groups ignoring everything said that
doesn't fit into the idea of "it doesn't matter, of course I've
risen above this; other people are the problem" or "it doesn't
matter, racism and historical context aren't even real, my
preferences have no implication in anyway."

What people would be better off discussing is the influence of
specific experiences in their lives, how those are culturally
influenced, and how they make sense of those things without the
black and white thinking of "you are either above operating in
context or have no self-agency" and "ethnicity, race, culture, and
racism are completely irrelevant to anyone's experience and if it's
not you racist by implication of acknowledging their
existence."

I'll add, while I do prefer a certain race for my own
partner, that does not include all of that member, nor does it mean
I believe that race is superior over another.... Again, I still
could be wrong.

When about the age of most commentators here, but in a different
world then, I exhibited prejudices that were nationalistic rather
than racist: On the other hand, I've never bee a racist as such.
However, I used to harbour, and even build-on some ridiculous
notions that went something like this:–

Canadians are the poor-man's Americans, and also the poor-man's
speakers of French

Cypriots, the poor-man's Greeks or Turks

Turks, Iranians, Pakistanis, Palestinians, etc are not the real
Arabs

Argentinians, the poor-man's Chileans

The Baltic States, Poland, The Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Romania
are no more than the Milk Countries

The Danes are not the real Scandinavians

The real Scandinavians are superior to the Germans

The Germans are superior to the Austrians

And I couldn't have been the only one who thought in that
misguided way. Even recently, on satellite television, I've seen
Arte, the Franco-German cultural channel, sub-title French-Canadian
films, as though to imply the latter isn't quite literate. And on
the main Greek channel, I've seen Greek-Cypriot movies treated
similarly. There seems to be so much of such thinking about that
probably it does affect us in romance

The pride in their Hochdeutsche may cause some Germans to
look-down on outlandish types, such as speakers of
Schwiizertüütsch: and, in TV interviews from remote parts of
Switzerland, they'll broadcast them with a complete set of
'translated´ sub-titles, even when unnecessary

And then there is attitudes that have little to do with
race, which are bound to affect us in relationships. For instance,
it's a German tendency to think of the Austrian universities as not
quite up-to-standard, especially in scientific or techncal
subjects; and though I think they like the British, I've more than
once heard them refer to the English as the
Island-Monkeys. See what I mean?

RigB, allow me to cut in here. People from deep Bayern and parts
of Die Schweiz are basically unintelligible to those speaking
Hochdeutsch. That's why they need subtitles even for what can
nominally be termed the same language. There's still some
belittlement there, but the subtitles I totally understand.

Jokingly, they'll tell you that Bayerisch is the worst dialect,
but without an understanding of its different components.
And I would not pretend to. Then would come Schwäbisch, from
the region of folks whose life is said to be ruled by cupidity; and
thirdly Sächsisch, with its mean-sounding accent and
weird vocabulary. Well, maybe it is all the same thing – and
that's tribalism

And as for the subtitles, MoSEaO –

I think they're shown too often – perhaps when it isn't entirely
necessary for an understanding of what's been said. And sometimes,
when it is, they fail to show them, maybe for politic reasons

I think as a choice, it depends on commonality more than
anything else. And the expectations we are raised with.

Skin is a very visual and easy filter. Where I was raised, there
were not many different cultures. There were some, but definitely
in the minority. Skin tone I am familiar with is white.

Then there is the cultural to consider. We in general are more
comfortable with similar cultural backgrounds. Get past the color
filter to find those. The few black men I would have been
interested in dating were of the mainstream culture, like myself.
We had similar experiences, cultural references and so on to build
upon. Religion and ethics as well as custom and traditions were
similar.

And then the familiar influence. I'm just one generation away
from the civil rights strife. One of the worst things she
ever said that I know about was in response to a friend of my
brother who asked her how she would feel if I dated a black man.
She said that she hoped I would have more sense than that. I
responded that whoever I chose, she would have the tolerance to
accept my choice. She explained her answer that she knew that such
relationships had a harder time because of other people and she did
not want to see me go through that conflict. My ex was a bigot, but
I didn't get to see that side until his niece had a baby by a black
man. He cut both mother and child out of his life and insisted that
I have nothing to do with them at family gatherings. His mother
didn't care and loved both mother and child, taking delight in her
great-grandchild.

It is an understandable filter in looking for partners and
nothing wrong with it. It is when it becomes blind and insistent
that others "stick to their own kind" that it wrong. Being I am of
mixed blood myself and knowing that while Amerindian/European mix
is more accepted, I know that there are some out there who will
treat that as something to not like in me as if culturally I wasn't
mainstream US, but something else. My ex was not comfortable with
it, in the end, so far down bigotry he went.

Far and away, this is the big one for me. Not so
muchthe comparative pop cultures (I really find those
pretty
unpleasant even from my own background) as just not
having contact with a lot of females outside my own
background/tastes. Even males have been pretty far
between, but at least there I've met a couple with
SOME commonality - not so much with females.